The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature.

In the 70 years since Alan Turing’s ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ appeared in Mind, there have been two widely-accepted interpretations of the Turing test: the canonical behaviourist interpretation and the rival inductive or epistemic interpretation. These readings are based on Turing’s Mind paper; few seem aware that Turing described two other versions of the imitation game. I have argued that both readings are inconsistent with Turing’s 1948 and 1952 statements about intelligence, and fail to explain the design of his game. (...) I argue instead for a response-dependence interpretation. This interpretation has implications for Turing’s view of free will: I argue that Turing’s writings suggest a new form of free will compatibilism, which I call response-dependence compatibilism. The philosophical implications of rethinking Turing’s test go yet further. It is assumed by numerous theorists that Turing anticipated the computational theory of mind. On the contrary, I argue, his remarks on intelligence and free will lead to a new objection to computationalism. (shrink)

The widespread tendency, even within AI, to anthropomorphize machines makes it easier to convince us of their intelligence. How can any putative demonstration of intelligence in machines be trusted if the AI researcher readily succumbs to make-believe? This is (what I shall call) the forensic problem of anthropomorphism. I argue that the Turing test provides a solution. This paper illustrates the phenomenon of misplaced anthropomorphism and presents a new perspective on Turingʼs imitation game. It also examines the role of the (...) Turing test in relation to the current dispute between human-level AI and ‘mindless intelligence’. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Turing proposed a new approach to the concept of thinking, based on his claim that intelligence is an ‘emotional concept’; and that the response-dependence interpretation of Turing’s ‘criterion for “thinking”’ is a better fit with his writings than orthodox interpretations. The aim of this paper is to clarify the response-dependence interpretation, by addressing such questions as: What did Turing mean by the expression ‘emotional’? Is Turing’s criterion subjective? Are ‘emotional’ judgements decided by social consensus? (...) Turing’s take on these issues impacts current philosophical debates on response-dependent concepts and on the nature of artificial intelligence. (shrink)

A standard account of Wittgenstein and Turing is that both were philosophical behaviourists regarding the mind, whereas theorists sympathetic to Wittgenstein typically claim that Wittgenstein was a fierce critic of Turing. Proponents of the latter account align Wittgenstein with AI naysayers; for Wittgenstein, they say, the question Can machines think? is nonsensical or absurd. I shall argue that both the standard and the alternative accounts are myths.

In 1948 Turing claimed that the concept of intelligence is an “emotional concept”. An emotional concept is a response-dependent concept and Turing’s remarks in his 1948 and 1952 papers suggest a response-dependence approach to the concept of intelligence. On this view, whether or not an object is intelligent is determined, as Turing said, “as much by our own state of mind and training as by the properties of the object”. His discussion of free will suggests a similar approach. Turing said, (...) for example, that if a machine’s program “results in its doing something interesting which we had not anticipated I should be inclined to say that the machine had originated something”. This points to a new form of free will compatibilism, which I call response-dependence compatibilism and explore here. (shrink)

Anderson (2011) offers a set of epistemic criteria by which novices can trust experts. Yet purely epistemic criteria are incomplete, since expert testimony often includes normative guidance that goes beyond descriptive claims. As Rudner (1953) notes, expert advice inevitably embeds value choices. Bennett (2022) sharpens this point by distinguishing epistemic trust from recommendation trust: lending credence to an expert’s descriptive claims is not the same as crediting their normative recommendations. Building on this distinction, I propose a method for novices to (...) disentangle the descriptive from the normative dimensions of expert advice. The method makes explicit the conditional, value‑based premises on which expert advice rests. This enables more informed decision‑making, especially when expert and novice values diverge. (shrink)

According to Richard Routley, a comprehensive theory of fiction is impossible, since almost anything is in principle imaginable. In my view, Routley is right: for any purported logic of fiction, there will be actual or imaginable fictions that successfully counterexample the logic. Using the example of ‘impossible’ fictions, I test this claim against theories proposed by Routley’s Meinongian contemporaries and also by Routley himself and his 21st century heirs. I argue that the phenomenon of impossible fictions challenges even today’s modal (...) Meinongians. (shrink)

Recent work in social robotics, which is aimed both at creating an artificial intelligence and providing a test-bed for psychological theories of human social development, involves building robots that can learn from ‘face-to-face’ interaction with human beings — as human infants do. The building-blocks of this interaction include the robot’s ‘expressive’ behaviours, for example, facial-expression and head-and-neck gesture. There is here an ideal opportunity to apply Wittgensteinian conceptual analysis to current theoretical and empirical work in the sciences. Wittgenstein’s philosophical psychology (...) is sympathetic to embodied and situated Artificial Intelligence (see Proudfoot, 2002, 2004b), and his discussion of facial-expression is remarkably modern. In this chapter, I explore his approach to facial-expression, using smiling as a representative example, and apply it to the canonical interactive face robot, Cynthia Breazeal’s Kismet (see e.g. Breazeal, 2009, 2002). I assess the claim that Kismet has expressive behaviours, with the aim of generating philosophical insights for AI. (shrink)

Turing used the expression “emotional” in three distinct ways: to state his philosophical theory of the concept of intelligence, to classify arguments for and against the possibility of machine intelligence, and to describe the education of a “child machine”. The remarks on emotion include several of the most important philosophical claims. This paper analyses these remarks and their significance for current research in Artificial Intelligence.

Biomedical diagnostic science is a great deal less successful than we've been willing to acknowledge in bioethics, and this fact has far-reaching ethical implications. In this article I consider the surprising prevalence of medically unexplained symptoms, and the term's ambiguous meaning. Then I frame central questions that remain answered in this context with respect to informed consent, autonomy, and truth-telling. Finally, I show that while considerable attention in this area is given to making sure not to provide biological care to (...) patients without a need, comparatively little is given to the competing, ethically central task of making sure never to obstruct access to biological care for those with diagnostically confusing biological conditions. I suggest this problem arises from confusion about the philosophical value of vagueness when it comes to the line between biological and psychosocial needs. (shrink)

We generally accept that medicine’s conceptual and ethical foundations are grounded in recognition of personhood. With patients in vegetative state, however, we’ve understood that the ethical implications of phenomenal consciousness are distinct from those of personhood. This suggests a need to reconsider medicine’s foundations. What is the role for recognition of consciousness (rather than personhood) in grounding the moral value of medicine and the specific demands of clinical ethics? I suggest that, according to holism, the moral value of medicine is (...) secured when conscious states are recognized in everyday medical science. Moreover, consciousness fully motivates traditional principles of clinical ethics if we understand respect for autonomy as respect for the dominion of an experiencer in the private, inescapable realm of bodily experience. When medicine’s foundations are grounded in recognition of consciousness, we understand how patients fully command respect even when they lack capacity to exercise their bodily dominion through decision-making. (shrink)

In this paper we apply Anscombe’s account of human linguistic practices and of intentional action in a novel way—to the acts, by members of the Ngāi Tahu tribe in colonial-era Aotearoa New Zealand, of writing Letters to the Editor of local and regional newspapers. We identify the salient contexts of those acts and then draw on Anscombe’s work to identify intentional and moral actions that otherwise risk going unnoticed. Our analysis exemplifies Anscombe’s and Wittgenstein’s view that we can read off (...) intentional action from behaviour in context and also yields a rich historical and conceptual account of the letter-writers. We argue that this approach has theoretical advantages for Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies. (shrink)

What position on dualism does medicine require? Our understanding of that ques- tion has been dictated by holism, as defined by the biopsychosocial model, since the late twentieth century. Unfortunately, holism was characterized at the start with con- fused definitions of ‘dualism’ and ‘reductionism’, and that problem has led to a deep, unrecognized conceptual split in the medical professions. Some insist that holism is a nonreductionist approach that aligns with some form of dualism, while others insist it’s a reductionist view (...) that sets out to eradicate dualism. It’s important to consider each version. Nonreductive holism is philosophically consistent and clinically unprob- lematic. Reductive holism, however, is conceptually incoherent—yet it is the basis for the common idea that the boundary between medical and mental health disorders must be vague. When we trace that idea through to its implementation in medical practice, we find evidence that it compromises the safety of patient care in the large portion of cases where clinicians grapple with diagnosis at the boundary between psychiatry and medicine. Having established that medicine must embrace some form of nonreduc- tionism, I argue that Chalmers’ naturalistic dualism is a stronger prima facie candidate than the nonreductive alternatives. Regardless of which form of nonreductionism we prefer, some philosophical corrections are needed to give medicine a safe and coherent foundation. (shrink)

This essay engages with the mounting published criticism of neo-institutionalism, but from the point of view of the institutional logical approach, one of its descendants. By addressing each of the main critiques: (1) institutional logical theory is tautological; (2) everything is institutional; (3) the absence of politics and power, and (4) its lack of a critical theory - the essay attempts to think how to build a theoretical apparatus able to engage with the current institutional crises of the world.

As national and state health care policy -making becomes contentious and complex, there is a need for a forum to debate and explore public concerns and values in health care, give voice to local citizens, to facilitate consensus among various stakeholders, and provide feedback and direction to health care institutions and policy makers. This paper explores the role that regional health care ethics committees can play and provides two contrasting examples of Networks involved in facilitation of public input into and (...) the development of health care policies and adoption of state-wide practices. (shrink)

This study emphasizes the importance of enhancing food safety and hygiene practices among sidewalk vendors to safeguard public health in Balayan Public Market. Employing a mixed-methods approach, with both quantitative and qualitative components, a diverse sample of 55 consumers, 5 sidewalk vendors, and 5 market administrators was selected using a combination of purposive and random sampling techniques under non-probability sampling. Microbial investigations were conducted during both the initial sampling and testing phase (A) and subsequent sampling and testing phase (B) on (...) popular street food items at Lipa Quality Control Inc., including chicken nuggets, chicken nugget sauce (sweet and vinegar), Isaw, Isaw sauce, Proben, Proben sauce, Calamares, Calamares Vinegar Sauce, Kwek- Kwek, and Kwek-Kwek sauce. The findings reveal that “Isaw and Chicken Nuggets Sauce (Sweet)” had a result of “Too Numerous To Count (TNTC),” indicating an extraordinarily high bacteria count. This underscores the imperative need to raise awareness and provide targeted guidance to sidewalk vendors regarding essential food handling, storage, and sanitation practices. Therefore, a sanitary action plan is developed to promote community engagement, educational initiatives, and regulatory support, enhancing food safety practices among sidewalk vendors and ensuring a safer and healthier food environment. (shrink)

Objetivo: Determinar la relación entre el hostigamiento y el desempeño laboral del personal de enfermería en los Hospitales II Vitarte EsSalud, Julio César Demarini Caro y Zacarías Correa Valdivia durante el año 2024. Métodos: Estudio de tipo básico, enfoque cuantitativo, nivel relacional y diseño no experimental de corte transaccional. La población estuvo conformada por un universo de 874 licenciados en enfermería, de los cuales se seleccionó una muestra probabilística de 267 profesionales mediante un muestreo aleatorio simple. La recolección de información (...) se realizó a través de la técnica de la encuesta, aplicando cuestionarios debidamente validados mediante juicio de expertos y con una confiabilidad medida por el coeficiente Alfa de Cronbach de 0,748 para la variable hostigamiento y de 0,735 para desempeño laboral. El análisis inferencial de los datos se procesó con el software estadístico SPSS V26, aplicando la prueba no paramétrica Rho de Spearman. Resultados: Se identificó una correlación estadísticamente significativa y positiva muy fuerte entre el hostigamiento y el desempeño laboral global con un coeficiente de correlación Rho de Spearman de 0,781 y un valor de significancia de p = 0,001 (p < 0,05). Con respecto a los componentes específicos evaluados, la dimensión de entorno conflictivo obtuvo una correlación directa y moderada-fuerte con un coeficiente Rho de 0,649 (p = 0,010). Conclusiones: Existe una relación directa, significativa y muy fuerte entre el hostigamiento percibido y el nivel de desempeño laboral del personal de enfermería en las instituciones hospitalarias públicas analizadas, evidenciando la necesidad imperativa de desarrollar intervenciones organizacionales eficaces y entornos laborales saludables. (shrink)

What is it exactly that we are attributing to a thing when we judge it to be good? According to the orthodox answer, at least in some cases when we judge that something is good we are attributing to it a monadic property. That is, good things are “just plain good.” I reject the orthodox view. In arguing against it, I begin with the idea that a plausible account of goodness must take seriously the intuitive claim that there is something (...) in common between moral and non-moral goodness—something in virtue of which it makes sense to call ‘good’ both the things that are morally good and the things that are non-morally good. However, it is implausible that all judgments about the goodness of things attribute a monadic property to those things, as this does not capture what we mean when we judge something to be non-morally good. Instead, I propose and defend my own relational theory of goodness according to which goodness is a relation that holds between things and ends (or goals). That is, goodness is a relational property such that to be good is to be related in the relevant way to some goal or another. This is true in both the mundane everyday cases and in loftier cases concerned with moral goodness. (shrink)

How can we improve business ethics education for the twenty first century? This study evaluates the effectiveness of a visual case exercise in the form of a 3D immersive game given to undergraduate students at two UK Universities as part of a mandatory business ethics module. We propose that due to evolving learning styles, the immersive nature of interactive games lends itself as a vehicle to make the learning of ethics more ‘concrete’ and ‘personal’ and therefore more engaging. To achieve (...) this, we designed and built an immersive 3D simulation game in the style of a visual case. The effectiveness of the game was evaluated using a mixed methods approach measuring recognised and adapted constructs from the technology acceptance model. Results demonstrate that students found the game beneficial to their learning of ethics with the development of knowledge and skills applicable to the real world and that they engaged with the process due to game elements. Findings demonstrate the potential for the development of simulated games to teach ethics at all levels and modes of delivery and the contribution of this type of visual case model as a pedagogic method. (shrink)

Kampus Merdeka was part of the Merdeka Belajar policy released by the Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (Kemendikbudristek) at the end of January 2020. This study focuses on a university program that gave students opportunities to develop skills in accordance with their talents and interests by entering the workforce right away as training for future careers. Until the middle of September 2022, 12 programs had launched. To provide a reliable reference, a comprehensive analysis of the Merdeka Curriculum (...) program was carried out in this work. We took a qualitative approach, conducting observations and interviews with fellow actors as well as a thorough analysis of pertinent databases on the related subjects. We found that active student participation and support from the university are the keys to the success of Kampus Merdeka. Furthermore, serious commitment is needed from all parties to gain a company’s trust. This study is important to gain deep insights into the Kampus Merdeka policy so that the needs of Kurikulum Merdeka can be met effectively. (shrink)

Background: Transgender health care is a subject of much debate among clinicians, political commentators, and policy-makers. While the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care (SOC) establish clinical standards, these standards contain implied ethics but lack explicit focused discussion of ethical considerations in providing care. An ethics chapter in the SOC would enhance clinical guidelines. Aims: We aim to provide a valuable guide for healthcare professionals, and anyone interested in the ethical aspects of clinical support for gender (...) diverse and transgender people of all ages. Recognizing that the WPATH is a global association, we address broad challenges. We offer a reflection on general ethical principles, providing conceptual tools for healthcare providers, patients, and families to navigate the specific challenges they might encounter in transgender health care, in line with WPATH’s worldwide mission and scope. Method: This article employs a descriptive analysis, and our framework of reference is the four principles of biomedical ethics: respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. Results: The article presents a discussion on the four ethical principles as applied to transgender health care. We address issues such as respect for patient autonomy in decision-making, the role of beneficence and nonmaleficence in clinical interventions, and the importance of justice in equitable treatment and access to care. Some of the ethical concerns we address in this article pertain to the current sociopolitical climate, where there has been increasing legal interference, internationally, for transgender and nonbinary people, particularly youth, seeking medical care. Discussion: We highlight the interplay between ethical principles and clinical practice, underscoring the need for ethical guidance in addressing the diverse challenges faced by healthcare providers and patients in transgender health care. We advocate for continuous refinement of ethical thinking to ensure that transgender health care is not only medically effective but also ethically sound. (shrink)

We respond to a Letter to the Editor regarding "Principlism and contemporary ethical considerations for providers of transgender health care." We address criticisms by Castle & Klein (2024) of blatant fatphobia related to the ethical elements concerning BMI restrictions for gender-affirming surgery. Our response corrects several mischaracterizations of the article and clarifies our position. My co-authors and I remain focused on advocating for patient-centered, ethically sound, evidence-based, and equitable healthcare policies.

Research within the H2020 PROGRESSIVE project has identified good practices in user co-production strategies and methodologies. Early findings from research in the PROGRESSIVE project were shared with relevant stakeholders outside the consortium for consultation and review. The outcomes of that initial investigation highlighted the need to focus on the objectives, processes, and methods used in user and older people co-production. This guide adapts these insights and makes them relevant specifically for standardisation in ICT for active and healthy ageing. This guide (...) was approved by representatives of the PROGRESSIVE project on 22 February 2018. The consortium has requested comments from interested stakeholders in an enquiry from 1 March to 30 April 2018. The PROGRESSIVE guide was approved on 5 June 2018. (shrink)

The ability to solve problems is a prerequisite in preparing mathematics preservice teachers. This study assessed preservice teachers’ problem-solving difficulties and performance, particularly in worded problems on number sense, measurement, geometry, algebra, and probability. Also, academic profile differences in the preservice teacher’s problem-solving performance and common errors were determined. A descriptive-comparative research design was employed with 158 random respondents. Data were gathered face-to-face during the first semester of the school year 2022-2023, and data were analyzed with the aid of jamovi (...) software, ensuring ethical measures. Overall findings revealed that the preservice teachers experienced average difficulty in solving problems. The low performance of the preservice teachers on the given problems was also demonstrated. Further analysis revealed a significant difference between the preservice teachers’ problem-solving performance based on their subject preference and program. Moreover, the error analysis revealed that the preservice teachers incurred comprehension errors in misrepresentation, misinterpretation, and miscalculation. These results will serve as a measure for policymakers and curriculum developers of the teacher education institution concerned to make relevant enhancements to the math courses offered in the elementary and secondary education programs. (shrink)

Book review of "The Evil Within: Why we need Moral Philosophy", by Diane Jeske.

The initial idea of fair equality of opportunity is that if two people are both capable of doing a job and would be equally good at it, then they should stand an equal chance of getting it, whereas if one is less capable then they should stand a less chance. Fair equality is recommended (mostly famously by John Rawls) with the hope of overcoming situations in which certain jobs are dominated by people of a certain social class. But it faces (...) what I call the problem of generational jobs: for a member of your family (or social network) to get one of these jobs normally requires adaptation by them for that end over generations: a clever child cannot do it without this preparatory work from previous generations, modifying the background of assumptions say. With this in mind, I discuss Diane Keaton, who recently died. Diane Keaton was known as an actress at the core of the world-famous American film industry and a stylish dresser, but she also directed films, for which she has no impressive reputation. She has a surprising image of herself in the role, looking to me like a military man’s housewife, and I think she is suggesting that this is a generational job and while she has built impressively upon the background of her ancestors as actress and style icon, she is no better than them here. I also comment on the relationship between the newspapers and the academic world. (shrink)

Diane Vaughan’s popular book, The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA, advances a thesis that I termed the “cog in the machine manifesto”: since the Challenger disaster was the result of the determined, mechanistic movement of the parts of the organizational system; once the mechanism was set in motion, the disaster was inevitable, and could not have been prevented. In order to expose the fallacies of the cog in the machine manifesto, I consider an alternative (...) umbrella thesis and four sub-theses. The umbrella thesis proposes that the causes of the Challenger disaster were the lack of an overall 'safety first' ethos, and irresponsible choice and poor decision-making practices in the lead up to and including the final risky decision. The four sub-theses are as follows: (1) the widespread justification that one always faces inherent risk when one operates in the realm of risky technology (a thesis foreshadowed by Vaughan’s book) is an illicit and misleading justification when one considers that there is no binding necessity to employ the risky technology; (2) the real culprit is not so much "risky technology," which locates the risk in the technology, but "risky assessment," which locates the risk in the decision to employ technology while not basing that decision on known safe designs and continued use on performance data; (3) the decision to choose an Orbiter without a passenger and crew abort system is proof in and of itself of a lack of a "safety first" management priority; (4) an analysis of the fateful eve of the Challenger launch teleconference launch decision makes it impossible to construe it as a banal, routine and inevitable organizational mistake. A careful examination of the “cog in the machine manifesto” and similar frameworks that purport to explain moral disasters will reveal that the language of risky technology, organizational complexity, and inevitable accidents is deeply pernicious and should thus be avoided at all costs. (shrink)

There is a particular kind of longing that only those displaced by Partition can truly understand: the yearning to return to the soil where one first breathed, where one's roots run deep beneath houses now occupied by strangers, beneath streets that carry different names, beneath a sky that belongs to a different nation. Hardev Singh Virk's Meri Janambhumi (Pakistan) Diyan Yatravan is an intimate, deeply personal account of that longing being fulfilled, not once but four times over four decades. Written (...) in Punjabi, the book chronicles the author's journeys to Pakistan in 1981, 1983, 1988, and most recently in 2024, weaving together the threads of personal memory, scientific achievement, cultural observation, and the bittersweet experience of returning to a homeland forever altered by history. (shrink)

The Porn Factor. Pornography and child sexual abuse es un libro que ha surgido fruto de la experiencia de la autora de darse cuenta de que después de 38 años de matrimonio con su esposo, durante 13 años él había abusado de menores de edad. La respuesta está en que los perpetradores son manipuladores tan altamente calificados, que pueden engañar incluso a la pareja con quien viven y convencer al menor que mantener el secreto en la oscuridad es críticamente importante (...) para ambos. Los perpetradores son usualmente adictos a la pornografía y esto es lo que busca la autora de este libro: que entendamos que nuestra sociedad se está “pornificando”, que vivimos en una “cultura pornificada” y que esta droga (la pornografía), es tan adictiva como la cocaína y está siendo uno de los principales factores causantes del abuso sexual de niños, niñas y adolescentes. (shrink)

There is a particular kind of longing that only those displaced by Partition can truly understand: the yearning to return to the soil where one first breathed, where one's roots run deep beneath houses now occupied by strangers, beneath streets that carry different names, beneath a sky that belongs to a different nation. Hardev Singh Virk's Meri Janambhumi (Pakistan) Diyan Yatravan is an intimate, deeply personal account of that longing being fulfilled, not once but four times over four decades. Written (...) in Punjabi, the book chronicles the author's journeys to Pakistan in 1981, 1983, 1988, and most recently in 2024, weaving together the threads of personal memory, scientific achievement, cultural observation, and the bittersweet experience of returning to a homeland forever altered by history. (shrink)

This paper considers the relationship between literary theory and film theory. It introduces Terry Eagleton’s view that literary theory developed in the 1960s to cater for students from uncultivated backgrounds and extends it to introduce an answer: the literary theories developed then can be applied to other things and that is how contemporary film theory arose. But what happens if we take earlier literary theory, even if it is not literary theory in Eagleton’s precise but unclarified sense, such as E.M. (...) Forster’s theory that highbrow literary works feature rounded characters (complex, changing, capable of surprising readers) as their main characters, not flat ones (one defining quality). I interpret Annie Hall as preventing the application of this theory. It is a highbrow film but also an attack on the impression of Annie as revealed by anything but the children’s cartoon. The actress who played her, Diane Keaton, died yesterday. This is not my first essay in response, if it prickles some readers. Analytic philosophy is lightly brought to bear on Forster’s distinction, but it seems Kathleen Stock’s job to me. (shrink)

Since at least 2008 linguists and philosophers of language have started paying more serious attention to issues concerning the meaning or use of racial epithets and slurs. In an influential article published in The Journal of Philosophy, for instance, Christopher Hom (2008) offered a semantic account of racial epithets called Combinatorial Externalism (CE) that advanced a novel argument for the exclusion of certain epithets from freedom of speech protection under the First Amendment (p. 435). Also in more recent work, “The (...) Expressive Meaning of Racial Epithets: Towards A Non-Unitary Account of Expressive Meaning,” Diane Blakemore (2013) offered an alternative pragmatic account of racial epithets rooted in Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson’s (1986) relevance theory. Adam Croom (2008) has also discussed epithets before in prior work, through a consideration of a paradigmatic racial epithet directed towards Native Americans, but then moved on in subsequent work to focus on developing a more nuanced account of paradigmatic slurring terms instead (Croom 2010; Croom 2011; Croom 2012; Croom 2013; Croom 2014a; Croom 2014b; Croom under review). So the purpose of this article is to return to and extend the previous account of racial epithets provided by Croom (2008) through a consideration of another paradigmatic racial epithet, but this time one directed towards Asian Americans instead of Native Americans. Here I also offer a novel suggestion for how to differentiate between epithets and slurs, offering new insight into how epithets and slurs are both similar and different. A sample list of over 100 other racial epithets that can be accounted for by the kind of analysis presented here is provided in Croom (2008, p. 44-45). (shrink)

This paper examines the paradox of the insecurity sharer: a person who shares with strangers what they are worried about (insecure about). Doing so, violates what Francis Bacon says about friendship: that one only shares such stuff with a friend. In 2014, Guardian journalist Emma Brockes wrote of actress Diane Keaton (who recently passed away), “The irony of all this is that writing about her insecurities to this degree requires her, at some level, to be profoundly secure.” I present (...) three solutions to the paradox: the insecurity sharer is mad; the insecurity sharer is acting; and, a clever solution maybe - what is rational for some famous people to share is simply different from what we (and Bacon) think rational. If you find that you strangely cannot get a good therapist, it is rational to seek help from anyone. (shrink)

Using the example of the very public discussion of violence in the wake of Chris Brown’s abuse of Rihanna, we argue that the widespread success of feminist efforts to combat gender-based violence in domestic settings have been undermined by parallel demands to uphold a neoliberal, post-feminist and post-racial subject who is called upon to create a future free of violence and abuse. Focusing on the media response to Brown’s violence, we examine how many accounts of gender-based violence rely on temporal (...) imperatives (i.e.‘give it time’ , ‘move forward’) that are intended to bolster women’s agency. Through an analysis of the media response (especially Diane Sawyer and Oprah Winfrey), we argue that the otherwise sympathetic discourse around the incident deploys self-improvement imperatives underwritten by victim blaming. We read Rihanna’s response to the violence done to her through the controlling images of black women including the‘strongblack- woman’ and the‘island woman’. We challenge the responsibilization of victims of violence and we imagine a solidarity that enables victims of violence to do more than simply imagine a future where one‘moves on’ and‘gets past’. We propose thinking of agency as between a past and a future where we negotiate new futures over time. (shrink)

Au début du Prologue 1 (chapitre V dans le découpage de Barocius)1, Proclus reprend le fameux passage de la ligne dans la République de Platon2. À la suite de Platon, Proclus déclare que la moitié supérieure de la ligne est divisée en νοητά et en διανοητά, lesquels sont appréhendés, respectivement, par la νόησις et la διάνοια. Dans son commentaire sur ce passage, Proclus fait deux remarques concernant la relation entre ces deux types de connaissance. En premier lieu, «la pensée discursive (...) (διάνοια) étudie les images (εικόνας) des intelligibles, images qui sont descendues des είδη premières, simples et sans parties vers la multiplicité et la division »3. Cela est en accord avec l'idée exprimée plus haut dans le chapitre I, à savoir que les objets des mathématiques « et les objets de la διάνοια en général »4 tiennent une place médiane entre les objets intelligibles et les objets sensibles. Ce sont des objets qui « imitent de manière morcelée et multiforme les modèles indivisibles et uniformes de ce qui existe »5. Ainsi, les objets de la διάνοια sont des images des νοητά; ils sont divisés, alors que les νοητά sont simples. En conséquence, la νόησις se situe en haut de la ligne divisée, alors que la διάνοια vient ensuite. (shrink)

An interruption. Rethinking the first three chapters of this book, I have come to suspect that, not unlike Iris Murdoch and Emmanuel Levinas, the way I imagine ‘ethics’ floats on an idea that any ethical substantive position or ethical theory is always shaped through our existential condition and our embodied encounter with others. To Murdoch, existence is the disposition for our responses to the ways in which we perceive reality, and yet, although these responses are always part of who we (...) are, they are not always part of what we do, and so, we set ourselves ethical tasks when we desire to act ethically. As scholar Bridget Clarke argues, “to attend to something [for Murdoch] is to approach it with a just and loving eye, and therewith to perceive it in its unbounded particularity and complexity, and so, as it truly is.” Or as I argue, to attend to the other ‘justly and lovingly’, Murdoch would instruct, is not merely to accurately collect details about the other and then arrive at an approximation of its being, but also to apprehend the other as ‘distinctly singular’ and ‘distinctly foreign’ from oneself–which at once forgoes any assimilation of the other into oneself, incidentally. The recognition of the other as ‘one who embodies human otherness and dignity’ becomes the condition for and coherent way of imagining and accessing moral reality. Moreover, for Diane Davis, this “being-for-the-other names a pre-originary obligation to respond to the other [and] it is in this response that both the self and the other emerge as existents” whose ethical projects are each challenged by the markedly different and infinitely other being. This obligation, Levinas might also say, is an ‘authority’ that is experienced like the effect of the other upon me, so that I am subsequently motivated to enact ethical task-making. I am not, therefore, “pulling everything other into the same, the known, the comprehended,” nor am I looking to any normative theories as authoritative templates from which I act ethically. And so, unlike Husserl, I am not “joining the philosophical tradition in its fundamental disrespect for all things other,” but instead, by dispositioning myself between these theories in responsible Levinasian fashion, I will be tracking them in response to their confronting me, and not as normative theories that are applicable to real and lived experiences. (shrink)

Review of: Kant and the Faculty of Feeling, edited by Kelly Sorensen and Diane Williamson. Cambridge University Press, 2018.